Serving as a translator for the Aja (Benin) School of Storying, Dodji sensed God’s invitation. “But how could someone like me ever become a servant of God?” Young, single and inexperienced, he couldn’t see it. But God could.
Coached by Parfait Mitchai, Dodji began his missionary training by sharing the gospel on a nearby campus using oral Bible stories as one of his strategies. But Parfait wasn’t finished recruiting.
One day Dodji learned that a young lady would be joining the campus ministry and be trained, with Dodji, in how to lead future SOS’s in West Africa. “I was sitting there with Parfait when she came in,” Dodji recalls. “We were like brother and sister… people started asking if we were twins!”
As Dodji and Doriane began working together as trainers for the Fulfulde SOS, our American trainers could see that God was up to something. “They think alike, their personalities are so similar,” Hera remembers. “They even have the same sense of humor!” Liz, a StoryRunners intern, agreed. So, as might be expected, Hera and Liz put their matchmaking skills to work. It didn’t take much convincing.
“It was when the SOS ended in May of 2015 that I realized it,” Dodji recounts. “I knew she was the one God had prepared for me, and I knew she would be my wife!” Dodji didn’t waste a minute. Without one date, Dodji told her what he knew from God. “Will you be my wife?” he asked her. “I thought you might ask,” Doriane replied to him. “And I had already decided to say YES.”
After a year of preparing and getting to know one another, Dodji and Doriane were married last May in a beautiful ceremony that several of our StoryRunners’ staff were able to attend.
“Now that we are married, we want to continue working with StoryRunners as full-time trainers and missionaries. We are ready to go anywhere and everywhere God wants us to go!”
Dodji and Doriane will be dynamic and strategic in the work of nationalizing StoryRunners’ Schools of Storying in the entire region of West Africa. Together, they have already begun training many local believers and will be leading SOS’s for many unreached languages in the future.
She Said Yes!